Dreams Of Darkness
by Levity Lirum
Summary: Harry just found out that he wasn't human anymore, nor, due to genetics, was he ever going to be anyway. The first inheritance brought on by loss triggered a second. Still, while he was different, he wasn't alone. Creature!Harry. New school.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Harry Potter or anything else copyrighted by someone, blah blah blah.

I know it's short but I'm leaving myself leway in case I don't get permission to use something from someone else.

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He saw them sometimes, usually while he was at school, but sometimes he would glance out the window and there one of them would be, standing across the street by the house or sitting on the roof of the shed.

There were twelve or so individuals, but only three appeared together and never for long.

They all had dark eyes.

As he grew older and began to attend school, he would sit under a tree in the corner of the playground and, sometimes, one of the people, a small woman with golden-brown skin and long dark hair, would drop a paper lunchbag down from the branches.

This would often be the only food he would receive for days.

They never spoke to him and he almost never spoke at all.

They never came more than ten feet of him, but their presence was oddly comforting, despite, or perhaps because of, their completely neutral feelings for him. Every other person he had met was either hostile or uncaring; their views tainted by the Dursleys or word-of-mouth. Some even pittied him.

The people with dark eyes just accepted, waited, left him unjudged.

By the time he was seven, they had become such a permanent fixture in his life, the dark-eyed people were like the neighbours and kids at school to him; people who were there with little impact on his life.

By the time his Hogwarts letters arrived, he barely gave them more attention than he gave a passing cat, so it never crossed his mind to tell anyone about them.

Even when they followed him to school.

He never questioned why no one noticed them. No one ever had.

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Review and tell me what you think.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I d not own Harry Potter or anything else belonging to someone else.

_**READ ME! **_Before I begin, I would just like to say that 'Nero Pazzia' was based on a disease from 'Upon A Fiery Steed' by Vathara, who tells me it was based on a disease in 'The Apocolyse Troll' by David Weber.

Enjoy.

* * *

He could feel the presence of one of the dark-eyed people in his room as he lay facing the wall in his bed.

The person was kneeling by the bed, arms resting on the sheets, watching him.

Harry was too deep in his despair to care that this was the closest any of them had gotten.

Perhaps he should have been angry at them.

He had seen them in the Department of Mysteries, but, while some of them appeared to want to help or were upset, they did not interfere.

They never interfered.

Even when they wanted to help, they didn't. Some fear was keeping them from interfering with his life.

Then Sirius had been thrown through the Veil and...

All Harry could remember was calm, focus and -_huntkillhuntkilhuntkilll_- . He had only a vague awareness of what he'd done before he'd resurfaced mid-Unforgivable, feeling tired and aching to his bones.

He'd been so tired that he'd almost been catatonic whilst Dumbledore arrived and fought Voldemort, rousing only when Voldemort attempted to take possession of him, lashing out with a cold hostility like the snarl and swipe of an irritable leopard.

As soon as he'd portkeyed into Dumbledore's office, he'd passed out curled up on a comfy chair in the corner, emotionally drained and exhausted, waking up two days later in the infirmary.

He wasn't even back a day and he had already seen more of the dark-eyed people than he had seen since he was about five.

The person shifted behind him (the rustling of hair against the sheets making him suspect it was the small woman or the slender man with thigh-length honey-brown hair), and stood. There was a sound of something being placed on his desk, then silence. The window softly slid closed.

**(space)(space)(space)**

It was a book.

The cover was old, faded-brown clothe stretched over wood, the thick pages dog-eared and yellow with age. There were small, written notes in the margins and occasionally there were pieces of paper or pictures placed between the pages. Though the spine was coming loose, another twenty or so pages had been added at the back in the last few years.

It was not a big book; only the size of a journal and couldn't be much more than one hundred pages long.

There was not title, only a note on the first page that read; '_Because we focused on the snake, we missed the scorpion.' Egyptian Proverb._

On the second page was the index, consisting of only _I:The Beginning, II: The Snake, III: The Scorpion, IX: The Existence. _There were no page numbers.

Harry turned to the first chapter.

At around 2000BC, a disease, later known as 'Nero Pazzia', the Black Madness, had swept through the magical races of the world like the Black Plague through Eurasia, killing all who contracted it. This disease, now known to have been airborne spores engineered through magic and adapted to target magical humanoids , ate the unusable host from the lungs and bloodstream out, often acting so quickly the unusable host would drop in their traces with no warning, going into coma and dying within minutes. The 'usable' hosts, now known to be those with the 'AB-' blood-type, would be able to partially bond with the spores, resulting in metastatic cancer and being pushed by the spores to 'spread'. The un-hosts, the carriers, would appear and act normal until something set off their adrenaline, at which point the spores, now a unicellular organism living in the blood and nervous system, would panic, causing a suicide-run to spread, making the carrier attack and cut themselves, spreading the disease to others via the carrier's blood getting into inflicted wounds.

There were twelve waves of the 'disease' over a period of 153 years before, on a small semi-isolated island in what is now called the Mediterranean, a strain of the 'disease' was released or somehow mutated close to the original strain which was later found to have come from the bloodstream of Nundus. This disease, though not always deadly, still killed most who were unfortunate as to contracted it, leaving only between 2 to 5 people as 'true hosts', many of them related in some way. The virus attacked the body voraciously, claiming 'territory' of the host body, regardless of race, and began a symbiotic existence with them. Those afflicted with the vampire virus or lycanthropy would spend several days sick as the Black Madness spores established themselves and eradicated the previously infected virus. Any additions to the make-up of the person would be retained while the virus based allergies would disappear (i.e. shapeshifters could still shift but were not restricted to moon cycles and silver, while vampires retained any talents they 'evolved' as a vampire without allergies to sunlight or the need for blood.). They universally became immune to any poison or sickness they came into contact while their blood became highly toxic to foreign bodies.

The resulting people were a new sub-race called the Veleno Se Stesso, the Poisoned Ones. These people eventually called themselves the Velen Clan.

The next chapter, titled 'The Snake', detailed how, with the assistance of the small enclave of 'Velen', the various races set about a more detailed investigation, headed by the former Vampire Clan Head turned Poisoned One, Sekhemet, and her clan formed from various races.

The virus was eventually tracked down to Mesopotamia, now Iraq and surrounding countries, more specifically the Akkadian Empire and parts of Sumar, the airborne spores transported all over the 'civilized' world in small green clay jars of incense. It was actually a little muggle girl training to be a priestess who gave one of the Velen an idea of where the virus came from.

The girl had been chanting aloud as she memorized an invocation against Lamashtu, whom the humans thought a demon-goddess of disease, amongst other things.

Investigation found that Lamashtu was the queen of a race cousin to the harpy called the Dimme. The Dimme were a race of winged beings, even the males appearing female, with a lion-like head, long, taloned fingers, hairy bodies and feet like a bird's. They had been extracting the virus from a Nundu cub they had muzzled and mostly kept petrified, modifying it, and breaking into the storage sheds of an incense merchant who lived at the foot of the gorge they lived in, where they removed a few, inserted the airborne spores into the incense jars, resealed the jars and put them back to be sold across the world. Their make-up rendered them immune to the spores.

The other races were not amused.

In roughly 1790BC, Sekhemet, backed by the vampires, shapeshifters, elves, goblins and every other race affected by the virus, led the assault on the Dimme, who were rendered extinct with extreme prejudice in just three years.

There ended the second chapter, and the third chapter, The Scorpion, began.

The Velen returned to the Mediterranean, a few scouts seeking any stragglers who had contracted and survived that strain, and congregated on an island off southeast of modern Greece, west of Cyprus. Members from most of the afflicted races had contracted the carrier strain, though mostly human, but were rejected by their own people. It was a Lamia, a Melusine and a vampire who individually had the idea to seek out Velen and bring them together, away from the prejudices of their former peoples. It was not long after the Dimme were eradicated that these three groups came together with Sekhemet and her warriors.

Over all, there were less than twenty thousand Velen, recognised by their eyes, which were a rich, gem-like green in the light, but were so dark as to be black when shadowed.

The island they occupied was renamed 'Sanctus', and was surrounded by shoal and reefs, the air was fast-moving and difficult to fly in.

The Velen, because of their immunities to poison and disease, were the only race to be able to domesticate the Nundu.

It was said that the air and rain of Sanctus was itself thick with enough poisonous miasma to kill a dragon with one breath, giving rise to an entire ecosystem dependant on the poisonous fumes.

Eventually, outsiders became aware that the Velen no longer aged, rendering children eternal children, old eternally old and so forth. And yet they were still breeding children who, unlike their infected kin, grew to adulthood before they stopped aging.

In fear that the Velen would attempt to spread when the island grew too small for their people, several vampire clans, not including Sekhemet's old clan, which had passed to her younger sister, Bastet, as well as the elves and magic-inclined humans, banded together and attacked Sanctus, hoping they could wipe out the Velen before they became too numerous.

It was a massacre.

The majority of the Velen were tired of death and war, and had no interest in fighting and bloodshed.

Starting from the south-west and moving in sectors, the invaders systematically slaughtered half the island in under a week before a former member of Sekhemet's warriors managed to avoid the culling and ran for the military on the eastern end of the island, warning ever town he passed.

What followed was a bloody struggle for survival. The entire island was surrounded and the elves had put up a barrier to negate magical transportation and messages.

The Velen could not get out, nor could they call for help.

At the end of three weeks, less than one hundred remained, half of them Sekhemet's warriors, a third of them very old 'Immortals' of various races, and the remainder children and 'Childs', the Childs being those who contracted the virus as children and ceased to grow. It was around this point that the Immortals were able to create a small tear in the wards deep under the water, allowing the survivors to swim out.

In their retreat, they triggered a trap, rendering all non-poison-based entities crippled, if not dead. Many of the invading forces found themselves prey to freed Nundu and poison-spitting dragons before they were forced to abandon the island due to the increasingly thick and potent miasma misting forests, fields and mountains of Sanctus.

Managing to reach Albania, the group of Velen split into three and set out into the world to find a place to call home, agreeing to meet back at Meteora, Greece, in ten years.

The team led by Sekhemet, consisting of a third of the remaining warriors, a lamia, a melusine, two drow and three Childs, was sent to find out who was involved or knew about the massacre and kill them, as well as collect the scouts and spies out of country that hadn't been quietly offed by the invaders.

The second team, headed by a swanmane simply called 'Little Swan' or Maralika, took the children, most of the remaining Childs, the surviving civilians, merchants and most of the scholars into the muggle world where they would wait until the time was up, subtly gaining knowledge and stockpiling stores and gold. Only five of the warriors accompanied this team.

The last team was led by a former travelling-scholar of indeterminable race named Razin. Razin's team was made up of the remaining warriors, the five Childs with assassination, informant or scouting training and the three former elves who would 'steal' their chosen area and displace it from the mundane plane of existence until they had place to 'put' it and anchor the place to.

Seven years in, they 'removed' several islands from what was now the Trang Archipelago, 'bubbling' the area to keep the ecosystem intact and separate from wherever they put it, rendering it effectively as attached to the planet as a castle in the sky, the weather linked to the place of origin to simulate the proper habitat of the wildlife.

Upon returning to Meteora with only a few weeks to spare, they found the other two groups already there, having grown in size from the retrieved scouts and spies, as well as a string of new children.

Bastet, unaware that her sister had survived, had gathered her warriors when the involved clans had bragged, and wiped no less than six vampire clans from existence in less than a year. The humans, thereafter, were systematically hunted to the ground, their children claimed by the clan as compensation, and, after the other races born from a magical disease, mostly lycanthropes and remaining vampires, found out what had been done, the elves were declared _persona non grata_ outside their hidden Realms.

The Velen are still considered an extinct race as no survivors were ever confirmed.

Harry, despite feeling very sorry for the Velen, could not help the uneasy feeling squeezing his stomach in a vice.

He dropped the book in shock and denial when he opened the chapter titled ; The Existence.

'_Identifying Carriers and Dormant-Hosts:_

_Offspring born to a Velen and a member of another race invariably have a one-in-four chance of being a carrier, and a one-in-four chance of being a Dormant Host. While Carriers may differential with racial and familial breeding, Dormant-Hosts invariably have memorably bright green eyes...'_

Harry was vaguely aware of hyperventilating before the blackness crept over his sight.

**(space)(space)(space)**

It was several days before Harry picked up the book from where he'd left it on the floor and opened it, needing to know if he was really a Dormant-Host.

Continuing on from where he left off, he began reading.

'_While Carriers may differential with racial and familial breeding, Dormant-Hosts invariably have memorably bright green eyes. _

_An unfortunate side-effect is that, while Carriers may continue having children and the Carrier-strain will die out after four generations, the Dormant-Hosts are not so lucky. As soon as the body reaches the end of its growth rate at between sixteen and eighteen for females and eighteen and twenty-one for males, the __Nero Pazzia__ attached to the DNA of the Carrier or Host parent can no longer become active, resulting in the eventual development of metastatic cancer, resulting in death before the age of thirty. Any child born to a Dormant-Host has a fifty percent chance of being a non-Carrier, but also a fifty percent chance of being a Dormant-Host._

_The Dormant-Host will also invariably have a bloodtype of AB-._

_Signs of a Dormant-Host Awakening into a Velen:_

_The Nero Pazzia is mildly empathetic and wakes up and starts spreading immediately when faced with extreme emotion such as rage or grief._

_The initial awakening can result in muting or a complete loss of the time when the virus is active. A side effect of the nor-adrenaline emergency-converted by the virus is a temporary loss of survival-hindering morals such as guilt or mercy. Adrenaline is what creates the 'fight-or-flight' response, which can result in panic and 'freezing', but with nor-adrenaline, which is strongly prevalent in cats and other large predators like the dragon, will result in someone who is calm, rational, sane, __**happy**__ person without the 'safety trigger' that would normally stop a person from acts they would not normally carry out, such as murder or torture._

_This is a carry-over from when the virus was originally a symbiotic entity living in the Nundu, which is fundamentally a large cat. The virus works by the modus operandi 'if it's not broken, don't fix it'. _

_In the weeks where the virus is further integrating into the host's system, the host will cannot be held responsible for many of their actions and should be kept calm until the virus settles in._

_Supervision of Dormant-Hosts:_

_All children known to be half-Velen are monitored for Dormant-Hosts, as are their descendants as far as ten generations to be safe. When a Dormant-Host becomes apparent in a bloodline, the child has a loose support network around them to support them if the virus becomes active, usually after the onset of puberty._

_As the newly-awakened Velen will become unable to change any aberrations to their body or change their appearance in any way (i.e. their hair will not grow, nor will it allow for colour-changes or cutting), one or two of the Velen assigned to supervise the child will appear and assist in any changes the new Velen will want to make before the virus locks in the appearance of its host and will not allow for changes after the third week_

_As soon as the change is complete, the Velen will be taken to the Archipelago to be taught their history, abilities and choose what to do with themself._

_Thank you for reading and we hope you will be able to adapt to our family._

_Aoelus _

_Keeper of Records_

_Councillor of the Learning Circle'_

Harry put the book down and drew his legs to his chest.

'_Great.'_ He thought, depressed. '_Even if I did somehow manage to survive Voldemort, if the virus didn't awaken, I still would have died.' _He sighed. '_To the wizarding world, I might as well be now.'_

Hearing his window open and soft sounds of clinking bottles, Harry glanced up to find the short woman reaching back through the window for a potion carry-case handed to her by the man with the long brown hair.

The woman gave Harry a warm, but sad smile, speaking in a voice that was oddly deep for someone who couldn't have been taller than 4'11 ft.

"Hello, Harry. My name is Rosalene. I have been chosen as your female mentor, and it will be an honour to do so."

The man came through the window long legs first. He looked around with dark eyes that flashed gem-green in the afternoon light before settling into Harry's only chair like a languid cat.

"I'm Razin, and I will be your male mentor." The man said, focussing on Harry with a genuine, good-natured warmth that most wouldn't expect from someone as physically attractive as him. "We've been watching you for a long time, and I, personally, hope that you will see this change, not as a loss, but as a beginning of what you never had, but should have been given unasked."

Razin smiled, his eyes crinkling.

"A family."

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	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I d not own Harry Potter or anything else belonging to someone else.

_**READ ME! **_Before I begin, I would just like to say that 'Nero Pazzia' was based on a disease from 'Upon A Fiery Steed' by Vathara, who tells me it was based on a disease in 'The Apocolyse Troll' by David Weber.

Enjoy.

* * *

Harry woke somewhere soft and fluffily warm; an oddly sweet smell like spiced treacle hit his nose, with the more subtle scent of water and cold stone mixed in.

Content to drift in half-sleep, Harry tried to remember what potions he had been given from the heavy unclean taste in his mouth.

When he found that he couldn't remember, Harry tried to rouse himself, shifting his arms and legs and...

Green-black eyes snapped open and he thrashed his way out of the blankets, hands grasping in confusion at the odd appendages attached to the back of his waist just above his hips and from his tailbone.

Harry keened in distress.

His hands were gently but firmly pulled away from the limbs, a soft, purring voice speaking to him, calling his attention to the small woman with the same spiced treacle smell, now backed by the smell of hot metal and dragonblood incense.

"-calm down, Harry. We're trying to working things out, but you have to stay calm." Harry leant into the woman, still keening, confused and afraid, and focused his attention on her oddly-deep, purring voice as it vibrated in her chest.

**(space)**

It took Harry a while to realise that the woman holding him was Rosalene, and even longer to realise that he was in an open-walled tree-house partially against a cliff, surrounded on three sides by transparent gauze and overlooking a massive sinkhole carved in the rock by the impressive waterfall to the house's right.

The house, despite being made of wood and in close proximity to a waterfall, was not the least bit damp.

Rosalene spoke after a time in a language with long vowels and clipped consonants, directing the speech to the left side of the room.

From where he was tucked under her chin, he saw Razin letting the gauze drop behind him, a sheaf of paper in his hand.

Razin's eyes flicked to Harry's and his...appendages as he answered the woman in the same language.

Rosalene pushed Harry back and looked at his face a moment, frowning in worried contemplation, before she smiled assuringly and carded a hand through his hair. "I just have to go see someone. Razin will stay with you and try to explain what happened. I'll be back as soon as I can, okay?"

Harry nodded and pulled away completely, curling into himself.

With a few soft words and worried glances as Harry, Rosalene left along the wooden walkway Razin had entered by, disappearing into the lush rainforest surrounding the lip of the sinkhole.

Razin came and sat beside Harry on the raised, nest-like bed.

Looking at him, Harry couldn't help but notice the oddly sharp edges in the man's attractive face and couldn't bring himself to believe that Razin had ever been fully human, if at all. He also wasn't much taller than Harry.

Razin himself was regarding Harry through a fall of seemingly brown hair made up of stands of brown, red and gold, but Harry couldn't tell what the man saw.

Razin looked down at the papers in his hand and sighed before looking back at Harry.

"I would like to say, first off, that we know what has happened, how it has happened, but not entirely why, as this has never really happened before."

Harry went still like a rabbit in the grass, watching the fox with nervous eyes.

"What has happened is, when the virus was attaching itself to you and spreading, it found something in your DNA that would assist you in staying alive. Normally, the virus would block any changes not induced before or during the awakening period, but, for whatever reason, your version of the virus has changed enough to bring out a non-human bloodline that was dormant in your DNA. The scientists believe it was chosen of any non-human blood in you to become active because the instincts of the race you have manifested are similar enough to those of the changes cause by the virus to assist in assimilation and survival."

Rizen peered at Harry worriedly. "Did you get that?"

Harry nodded and replied dutifully. "My virus had changed a little and has manifested a dormant ancestral bloodline from another race as further means to keep us alive."

Rizen released a soft breath. "Right. As soon as we have finished teaching you about yourself, we will see about further schooling later if you want."

Harry nodded again, watching the long black appendage twitch like a cat's tail beside him with a resigned air. "What am I?"

"A cambion." Razin replied, also watching Harry's barbed tail twitch. "A cambion is usually the son or daughter of an incubus or succubus. Despite popular beliefs, the two are separate races; cousins, but different. Given the shape and positions of your wings and these-" Harry jerked in surprise when Rizen brushed something highly sensitive on top of his head, "- one of your ancestors was a succubus, undoubtedly from your father's side."

Harry looked at the man curiously. "Why my father?"

Razin smiled a little wickedly. "Because your great-father on your mother's side was completely certain that his lover of that time was completely muggle, and you can't argue with a Naga's sense of taste." Harry blinked as Razin threw in blithely, "And also because 'Pureblooded' wizards and witches preferred to breed with other magical races rather than 'Mudbloods' and muggles."

"Huh." Harry murmured in surprise. "Go figure."

Harry glanced around the small house again. "So I'm...where?"

Razin smirked and leant back on his elbows, lounging on the bed. "This will be your house unless something untoward happens to you or you marry someone with a house you like better."

The cambion's gaze snapped back to Razin. "Mine?"

The older Velen nodded. "When a Velen volunteers to mentor a new-made, they work with the other mentor to build a house for them. It satisfies the virus's primal instinct to nest and provide for the young." Razin looked at the shocked boy. "It also signifies dedication to the young one. By volunteering as your mentors, Rosalene and I have adopted you in the eyes of the Velen community."

**(space)**

Harry wasn't sure he liked his appearance, but supposed that it was different enough that he didn't look gaunt and bony like he would have had the bloodline not kicked in, regardless of what potions he had had poured down his throat.

He was still small, standing at 5'2ft, but instead of being malnourished, his form had actually dropped bone mass, slimming him into a streamline form similar to that of a child with slightly broad shoulders and soft-seeming muscles he had been told were supposedly the strongest muscles, comparatively, of any species for their size, made thus for the sole purpose of moving faster. And because he could move so fast, he was told, his reflexes and situational-awareness would also be very high, allowing him to change direction and manoeuvre going up to 435m/h over short distances with a 'travelling' speed of between 60 and 92m/h.

On foot.

He would eventually be able to morph his feet into padded and scaled claws for traction.

His skin was still a pinkish-peach, but almost all his body hair had been expelled by the follicles as they and the pores in his skin filled in and smoothed out. Razin had commented that, according to medical records, succubi released heat by panting and through their wings, but could also release a mild aphrodisiac through their skin to simulate sweat.

His fingernails looked the same, though looking like they'd been through a manicure, until he had flexed his fingers because his end knuckles were stiff, revealing that his nails were retractable and were hidden in his fingers up to the second knuckle. He was even further surprised to find a slim spine under each of his ring finger's nails that bled a yellow-tinged venom, which was promptly milked a few drops by Razin to take to the labs for testing.

Aside from the mandatory darkening of his eyes, Harry was a little relieved to note that, while his chin had lost definition and come to a heart-shaped point, his eyelashes were thicker and darker, his eyebrows naturally shaped and his lips pinker, at least his face was still recognisable as Harry's.

His hair, which had been coarse and bristled wildly, has softened to something like rabbit fur; the short blue-clack hair in curved waves swimming around his face and slightly pointed ears, gently brushing the undersides of the odd, bat wing-like appendages on his head that functioned as both echo-sonar and weathervanes when flying.

The wings attached to Harry's waist, the cambion felt, were fairly useless in that they were only a hand-length longer than his out-stretched arms. They were small and delicate, with a little horn-like hook at the 'thumb' joint, and were mostly black with short green-sheened fur on the webbing, echoed by the webbing on his head-wings. When experimenting, Harry found he could move his larger wings like his arms, sometimes unknowingly making gestures with them.

His tail was just a tail, moving without conscious thought and little, if any, coordination. Still, it hung to his ankles when not moving, and was covered in the same felt-like black fur as his wings, coming to a single-barbed tip.

His teeth were merely normal, though pearly white, teeth as far as he could tell. Go figure.

Harry frowned.

"My clothes won't fit anymore."

Razin snerked in the background.

**(space)**

Harry's head-wings twitched under the hood of his cloak, trying without much success to find an air current to read. His tail wasn't much happier, stuffed down a pair of faded-black loose-leg jeans and tied with strips of leather to his left leg. His larger wings were folded and tied in place with a set of three belts wrapped around his torso, seemingly for aesthetic reasons. Under the belts was a long-sleeved shirt with a slightly short waist, a square neck and white accents on the collar and the wide bell-sleeves. He was wearing black leather gloves to hide his nails.

Black boots, a choker and the heavy black cloak completed the ensemble.

Harry wondered if this is what a child feels like when his mother sets out his outfit for the day. Rosalene had said she had borrowed the outfit from one of the Velen-Vampires who had awakened his bloodline at seventeen and had been stuck as suck for around five hundred years.

What most people either forget or didn't know was that, a thousand years ago, growing to six foot tall was giant for the people of that period.

He was going with Rosalene and Razin to Gringotts to write a will, cease his tuition payments to Hogwarts as he was not returning, and to retrieve money for shopping.

An off-hand comment from Razin about his family history, which Razin said he should have been taught about in the first year at Hogwarts by a family retainer, both Harry's male and female mentors had shared a look before pumping Harry for any information he knew about the family ledgers.

He knew next to nothing other than he had a Trust vault.

Lips had thinned and jaws clenched and Rosalene had, through clenched teeth, told Harry that they were going to take Harry to Gringotts in one hour to have a _chat_ with his family accountant and managers.

Razin left and returned just as they were about to leave with two thick books; one on British Wizarding Law and the other on Gringotts Rule and Regulations.

Which was why Harry was fidgeting in place behind his mentors as Razin hissed at the goblin behind the counter that they wanted a _word_ with any goblins affiliated with Harry Potter's accounts and vaults.

The goblin bolted in a very ungoblin-like manner, pausing only to speak to a younger goblin who took the trio to a small conference room off the main hall.

Razin was settled like an irritable cat in his chair by at their end of the oblong table, Harry fidgeted in his seat at the head and Rosalene was quite coolly reading through the book on Gringotts, absently jotting down references and notes in what looked like Arabic.

It was less than five minutes later than three goblins and two humans entered the room.

Rosalene waved her hand and blocked any monitoring magic while Razin's magic blacked out the windows and paintings and sealed the two doors in the room before turning their attention to the five Gringotts employees.

The middle goblin cleared his throat.

"May we inquire what this is about, Mr Potter?" He inquired of the boy at the end of the table.

Harry shrugged and Razin twitched when his student/adopted son glanced at him inquiringly. Rosalene's nostrils flared.

Razin smiled as smile full of clenched teeth. "As Harry's current guardians and tutors, while determining what Harry knows, imagine our surprise when he was unable to answer any questions about any of his father's family." The humans, whom Harry suspected were probably in a profession similar to lawyers, sat up straighter.

"And then," Rosalene continued in a pleasant voice. "When we figured out that Harry didn't even know where his parents were buried or, indeed, what his grandparents names were, we asked him what he knew about his family's accounts, ledgers and properties, he told us that he thought he only had a Trust vault."

The quill in the left goblin's hand snapped.

The middle goblin's face twitched. "Is this true, Mr Potter?"

Harry nodded a little hesitantly, suddenly wondering why he hadn't thought this was a big deal.

The actions of everyone in the room were quickly disillusioning him of this idea.

Harry frowned. He had always wanted some family to come and take him away as a child, wondered what his grandparents were like, what their names were, what they did...so why was any thought of them gone? He couldn't remember when the idea of grandparents ceased to tease his mind, but he distinctly remembered thinking about them just... after...

...he turned eleven...

Harry frowned harder and rubbed his temple, his head suddenly aching.

"_Neverland makes you forget..." _A little voice jabbered hysterically in the back of his mind.

He vaguely heard the distinct sound of glass shattering as head met table.

* * *

A cambion is a child born to a human and a succubus/incubus. It annoys me when people go 'OMG! Harry is suddenly a fullblooded incubus!'. gag

'Razin', btw, is Persian and means 'Polite'. He will be very polite when asking you to review.

...Even if he scares the crap out of people...

But I love him.

If you wanna make pictures, I wanna see.


	4. Chapter 4

-x-x-x-x-

Someone was yelling and snarling while another spoke coldly.

A third was seemingly old and frail, but was, at the same time, sly and oddly nagging.

Harry woke to find himself in a corner of the conference room, partially hidden behind an overturned wall table and half-curled into a cloud-mate's warm side.

The world, he noticed, was overlaid by darkness, grey shadows wrapping around furniture and bright, fiery light was wrapped around the people; vibrant, '_enemy-fight-protect young'_ black-green for his cloud-mates, the goblins and the two humans his cloud had been had been talking to earlier were a particularly fiery shade of fire opal, which meant aggression and protectiveness wholly different from what his cloud-mates were projecting. Still, there was a sense of '_one of Us-protect child from Not Us'._

But, opposing the goblins was a group, mostly of people with uncertain shadowy grey emotions with sparks of old-blood red-brown superiority and a greenish-brown shade that said they were disgusted by the race the goblins belonged to. One, a small round woman, was projecting possessiveness and an overwhelming desire to control, resulting in an oddly disgusting warp like a set of bruises that had been left to heal a little before being re-bruised.

Still, the overpowering intent projecting from the old man was utterly repulsive.

Harry, having never come into contact with this set of intent, was unable to identify this chaotic symphony of madness.

Harry pressed himself into the side of his cloud-mate, letting loose a soft trill-keen of confusion, bowing to her greater knowledge.

"Covetousness." She murmured, her oddly deep voice brimming with hatred. "Desire for unopposed control. Self-delusion. Megalomania. Self-righteousness. Albus Dumbledore believes he is God. Maybe not in so many words, but he believes everything he does and believes is the only Right there is."

"Harry, my boy-"

'Harry, my boy' turned and suddenly his mouth was wide enough to reach the ends of his jawbone(*), his teeth splitting into three smaller pointed teeth each as he hissed at the Headmaster of Hogwarts, face contorting into a near-animal motley of instincts, teeth, anger and distrust.

Then buried his face back into his cloud-mate's side as she crooned, keeping one darkening green eye on the intruders through the overturned table's legs.

The intruders' auras flared with horror of a pale indescribable colour and a few with out-and-out burning green hatred.

"Oh, Harry..." The old intruder murmured, his sad and disappointed voice at odds with the calculating icy blue and sugar pink covetousness. "Come with us and we'll see about returning you to your old shape."

The old intruder moved as if to approach Harry, who was releasing a steady, back off hiss-growl-cough like a threatened cheetah.

The goblins closed ranks in front of the old intruder, flanked by the two wizards whose wands were drawn and pointed, just as Harry's male cloud-mate's projections almost solidified into deep black shot with leaf green, almost completely committed to fighting the enemy. The female cloud-mate shifted into a crouch, subtly pushing him behind her.

The intruders rallied behind the old intruder...

Then the doors opened and a dozen goblin guards out-flanked the intruders, followed by several Aurors, an older woman with a square jaw and a monocle whom Harry vaguely remembered as being someone in charge, and someone who was something else.

Harry nudged his cloud-mate curiously.

"A vampire from the Magical Being Liaison Department." She murmured.

Harry nodded and turned his attention back to what was happening.

All the intruders but the old intruder had been disarmed and were kneeling on the floor with their hands behind their heads, the Aurors standing behind them in guard positions. The goblins were quite aggressively positioned between Harry and the old intruder, not even allowing the Aurors past.

The vampire had approached his male cloud-mate and the two were talking softly.

The older woman, now recognised as Madam Amelia Bones of the DMLE, was looking sternly and angrily around the room, projecting anger at the old intruder and what Harry could only describe as extreme aggravation over the newest Dumbledore Cluster Fuck(TM).

"May I ask what in the name of Circie's swine is going on here?" She demanded of the room in general.

Razin turned from his hastily whispered conversation with the vampire to respond. "Do you want the laws Dumbledore has broken numerically, alphabetically or chronologically? Any way you choose, the list may take a few days to get as complete as we can get it." Razin paused. "And can you please take the old man into custody? As the legal guardian of the offended minor, I can and will be pressing charges. I imagine Gringotts bank will also be pursuing a lawsuit."

The goblin who had been in the middle of the original three nodded with a smile-snarl. "We shall indeed."

The old intruder, identified as Headmaster Albus Dumbledore now that the over-lapping world of light and shadow was fading as Harry came out of his instinct-driven state, opened his mouth and spoke, the oddly nagging sound irritating Harry's ears and causing his head-wings to hug close to his head in distress.

Harry whined and pressed his hands to his ears. He heard Rosalene's voice saying something in a sharp tone, which resulted in a sudden outburst of noise and movement.

The strong scent of spiced treacle filled his nose, the scent from the left was Rosalene's scent of hot metal and dragonblood incense, but the one from in front of him was wind before rain, wet wood and turned earth.

Opening his eyes, Harry was unsurprised to find the scent belonged to Razin, who was kneeling in front of him, wrist held near his nose.

Something softened in Razin's intense face, leading harry to realise that the two Velen were worried about him and how he was reacting.

Slightly dazed, Harry blinked slowly up at his mentor with now solid black eyes, absently rubbing his jaw-line against the offered wrist like a cat.

Razin smiled and turned his hand, rubbing under Harry's chin.

Rosalene said something in the other language the Velen used, simply called 'Common'. He would be learning it soon.

Razin replied and nodded.

Looking again at Harry, he smiled and held out a hand. "C'mon. We'll be coming back on another day. Rosalene's gonna stay behind and sort everything out with the Ministry and reschedule a meeting with your account managers. Selwyn has gone to retrieve an information package for magical schools you can finish your education in, though I've already told him that we want to give you a year to adapt to your altered body." At Harry's look, Razin explained further. "Selwyn is the vampire from the Magical Being Liason Department. He's descended from Clan Scota, who have close ties to Clan Bastet as their Founders are cousins. Apparently he deals with two or three inheritances like this every year, so he has contingency plans in place to protect people like you in the vulnerable early stages of your changes."

Sticking close to Razin's side, the two males quietly left the room through the side door shown to them by a goblin guard while Madam Bones and her Aurors forcefully led the much protesting Dumbledore out of the room into the main corridor.

Just as the two reached the floo fireplaces in a room off the entry hall, Razin gave Harry a mischievous little-boy grin, dimples and all.

"So, Harry...Have you ever given thought to potholing?"

Harry blinked.

"What's potholing?"

-x-x-x-x-

Potholing, Harry found, was his new favourite hobby.

It was, essentially, the United Kingdom's term for caving, also called spelunking in North America.

Having lived in the cupboard under the stairs for so much of his younger life, Harry was neither claustrophobic nor scared of the dark, so he was right at home in the literally cave-riddled underground of the Velen Archipelago, which was suspended in a Barrier Wold.

He was especially enamoured by cavern diving, which Razin found odd considering cambions were beings of air and darkness, and cats were rather lacking in gills and webbing. Further testing showed some internal or magical traits from his naga ancestor, which gave him an affinity for rain and water (and a peculiar affinity for pearls), and what they suspected might have been a shapeshifting sighthound($) from the Wild Hunt, resulting in a strong prey-drive and a decent, though not primary, sense of smell. As far as they could tell, Harry would never become afflicted with a cambion's sex-based metaphysics.

Dog, cat, snake and rat. It sounded like the bad opening for a joke.

It also rendered him, technically, a humanoid chimera instead of a cambion, but the cambion was less stigmatised than a chimera, so Razin had had Harry listed as a cambion on the Velen Register.

Harry had sulked a little when Razin set down the rules of never potholing alone and always following a line unless the teen was in Razin's company.

Rolling her eyes, Rosalene had dragged Harry away, out to one of the smaller islands, called Momolene, to snorkel around the tropical reef there and to introduce her foster-child to his great-grandfather, the naga Barsaat, who's name meant 'Welcome rain' and also happened to be a consummated shapeshifter.

Harry hadn't known what a naga was until he'd met his very young-looking great-grandfather, who also happened to really be a giant shapeshifting black cobra with a shiny bluish pearl imbedded in his forehead.

All Harry could think at the time was that Dumbledore was a dirty liar. Here he'd been, blindly trusting that he'd inherited his abilities as a parselmouth when he was attacked by Voldemort, when really he'd just had a snake for a near ancestor.

The little cambion wondered what other bullshit Dumbledore had spewed out that wasn't connected to the Dark Lord, but was just Harry.

When talking to Barsaat, who had a surprisingly dry sense of humour, Harry had also been informed that Voldemort was not, currently, THE Dark Lord, but only one of five worldwide.

He wasn't even the scariest.

That title currently belonged to the Dark Priestess Alejandra of the Caribbean. No one particularly wanted to cross that lagaroo(+). She did her own dirty work.

Something about skinning...

-x-x-x-x-

Harry was floating on the sandy bottom of a warm pool at the bottom of the sinkhole below his house, able to breathe just fine with the help of gillyweed.

He was meditating in streams of bright, flickering sunlight, calmly ignoring the trio of young sea-snakes playing tag around his body, totally at peace with himself...

_'FWOOSH!'_

Black eyes snapped open and he gritted his teeth.

'_Mory...!'_

The impish Velen girl with dark ivory skin and black hair grinned, flashing her sharp, pointy teeth, knowing damned well he wanted peace from his 'fanclub'.

Amamory 'Mory' Brookes was some four hundred years his senior and his self-proclaimed best friend. She was half Unseelie Sidhe and half Velen-Water Fey, and had triggered her Nero Pazzia strain at fourteen during an attempted rape by one of her Sidhe father's enemies. The attacking Sidhe, a prince in that Court, had not survived the sudden personality shift. Barsaat and a melusine named Olga were her foster-parents, so she was rather attached to her 'little nephew'.

Mory never spoke of the Velen mother who had abandoned her to her distant, albeit loving, father. She hadn't seen her father since before the attack, and would likely never see him again.

Harry was personally thankful, on her behalf, that Velen disassociated themselves from memories from their previous lives; the instinctive, subconscious barrier that allowed everything to float away to the back of their mind, muting any sense of loss they may have felt over the change within months.

Harry would admit to himself, and never out loud, that he was a lot fonder of Mory than he had ever been of Ron and Hermione. Ron had been a friend out of necessity; at once both stupid and full of knowledge. Hermione, while infinitely smarter, had just attached herself to the two of them and Harry had been too submissive to tell her she wasn't wanted.

Mory, with her perky, pranking, bouncing-ball-o'-light personality, had been someone who had dragged Harry out into harmless catastrophe after harmless catastrophe, each weirder and more absurd than the last. At the end, Harry hadn't been able to resist enjoying Mory's playful, trouble-riddled existence.

What remaining Snares left in Harry's mind and personality by Dumbledore were flooded, broken down, or over-ridden. Harry rather thought it was akin to walking from a cold, shadowed hall into a warm, sunlit courtyard.

Harry jerked and swiped at Mory when the girl-woman trickled his ribs.

"_How long until the gillyweed wears off?" _She asked, her voice echoing clearly through her element.

Lacking the vocals needed for speaking underwater, despite the gillyweed, Harry checked his water-proof watch.

He held up three fingers, then five. Fifteen minutes.

"_Okay. Razin and Rosalene are up on your veranda waiting for you. Apparently it's getting to the point where you have to choose a school."_ She grinned and let loose a squeal as Ronan, a Velen-selkie, goosed her as he flashed past.

So much for privacy.

Still, he hadn't realised that he would be turning seventeen in a little over a month, meaning he would be an adult in the eyes of most magical ministries.

There were usually only three to five new Velen a decade, either born, awakened or, much more rarely, infected, so the small group was usually put into the same school at the same time to finish their official schooling, while learning from the older Velen in the mean time.

But he was Harry Potter. If he didn't finish his education, people would start asking questions.

Razin had come up with a one-year grace period under the guise of helping Harry get used to his new body on the fly. This gave the main council time to decide what to do.

Regardless of where Harry went, four 'young' Velen would be quietly entered to watch his back. Mory would be amongst them, already a trained assassin and thief with several unofficial Masteries in the Arts.

He also suspected they would send a Velen-vampire, who currently worked under the moniker of 'Wicked', as well. Wicked was, frankly, more than a little wicked in nature, but not evil, and had never, according to Mory, done or brought harm to any Velen in living memory.

Wicked appeared to be seventeen most of the time, but due to his extensive Metamorphmagus abilities, he could look like anyone, though he preferred dark hair and his base gender of male. He had a wicked sense of humour (excuse the pun) and worked primarily in Intel outside the Barrier World.

Harry quite liked him so long as he didn't have to take classes from the man.

The cambion was almost positive that Razin and Rosalene had already decided they wanted Harry to go to Tumultuosa Aequora, which meant turbulent waters. It was a school where humans without inherited abilities were strictly forbidden and was the favoured school to send young Velen to.

He heard it was...interesting.

* * *

(*)Like the Doom and Gloom Sisters in the first arc of Sailor Moon.

($) A sighthound is a hound that hunts by sight rather than nose. They have a strong prey-drive instinct (read: if it runs, they will chase it, regardless of countercommands, until they either catch or lose it). Sighthounds include, greyhounds, wolfhounds, deerhounds, Pharaoh Hounds, saluki, etc.

+ A vampire-like witch who has made a deal with the devil for power. She appears as a kindly old lady by day but every night she leaves her skin under a 'devil's tree', the silk cotton tree, and cannot return to it until she had harvested enough blood. She flies around as a ball of light or fire during this time.


End file.
